Reviews of Pure Tea (Camellia sinensis)
Page 1 2 3 4 5 of 5 pages with 118 results
Yellow Label Tea from Lipton Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend50 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 18th, 2025
I got this tea at an eatery in Bangkok, and also from my daughter who lives there, and brought a bag home to try on the same well water in which I've reviewed other teas here. I'm not convinced it was worth hauling back its couple grams of dry weight in the suitcase.
In every way, this tea struck me as essentiall...
Morning Storm Tea from TWG Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend75 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 11th, 2025
This is the first of a handful of loose teas I purchased, for somewhat of a high price (even in the otherwise favorable baht/USD conversion), at TWG's nicely done Emporium Mall store in Bangkok. Now that I'm home, they'll be rotated in behind teas being used up.
Admittedly, I got Morning Storm mainly for the name, ...
Pure White Tea from Twinings
Style: White Tea – Region: Fujian, China45 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 2/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 11th, 2025
It's cool when the host of an AirBnB leaves a variety of teas, and even cooler when one is a new tea for me to try.
Unfortunately, even for white tea, this was underwhelming overall. The dry-bag aroma may have been the best part: mild, but somewhat floral, yet distinctively tea-dominant, as if this would be a del...
Radiant Green from Teavana
Style: Green Tea – Region: China60 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 2/5
Dec. 23rd, 2024
How can a green tea be radiant? Is it radioactive, glowing green? Fortunately, the answer is, "No. It's just a name."
This is another in a line of Teavana bagged teas that now come with fairly typical folded bag, string and tag, and is overpriced by a factor of two to three for what one gets, on most sites wher...
Baker Street Blend from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend62 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 17th, 2024
This is such a daring mix of different tea types that it's hard to believe the blend is over 100 years old, instead of a seasonal or experimental offering. Baker Street (per Murchie's website) is the same as their popular and longstanding No. 10 Blend, but with one tea added: Lapsang Souchong. So in total, the blend...
Read Full Review
English Breakfast (tea bags) from Teavana
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend75 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 3/5
Nov. 12th, 2024
Another bagged offering arrives from Teavana's latest comeback push, which finds its teas (including this one) in late 2024 in online stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon, and even Staples (where the price was lowest as of this writing, but still around $12 for a 24-ct box).
I used an average of the retail prices ...
Coronation Blend from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend84 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Nov. 9th, 2024
Here's the latest in a long line of Murchie's teas commemorating assorted milestones in the modern history of the British royal family—in this case, the ascension of Charles to the throne. Is this a tea worthy of a king? While not their best such black-tea blend, I'd wager His Highness would be satisfied to drink t...
Read Full Review
Himalayan from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Nepal80 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Sep. 19th, 2024
My first Nepalese tea was a pleasant experience, but only after a little trial and error. First, the aroma: a good bit milder than the flavor, but pleasant, earthy, and floral, as if in a freshly watered flower garden with just a few active blooms of marigold or carnation wafting their scents airborne.
The first...
Extra Strong from PG Tips
Style: Black Tea – Region: ?????78 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Sep. 17th, 2024
PG Extra Strong is a no-frills but robustly flavored black tea that delivers a nice punch of tea for about 10 to 11 cents a bag (from an 80-ct box). This British tea (now under the Lipton/Unilever corporate umbrella) was on sale at the World Market where I bought a big box of Typhoo's same-named tea a few years ago. ...
Read Full Review
Organic Assam Black Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Assam – Region: Assam, India81 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 5/5
Jul. 24th, 2024
Trader Joe's teas seem to fall into two bins:
1. Very good, which at their typically low prices for bagged tea, makes it quite a strong value, even if not nearly the best of its type, and
2. Mediocre to poor, as one expects from most store brands.
Fortunately their organic Assam offering lies squarely in the fir...
Original (Black Tea) from Red Rose Tea
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend59 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 27th, 2024
Seldom have I sampled a tea with such a gap between aroma (or lack thereof) and taste. It's a vast chasm, really. The Grand Canyon might be a good analog with another several million years of erosion, widening and deepening.
This was a motel pickup somewhere out on the Great Plains. I don't recall where. I had a...
Darjeeling Black Tea from Rituals
Style: Darjeeling Black Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India79 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Jun. 23rd, 2024
Here's another new Rituals tea for me (and this website), also first sampled at the Days Inn in Hays, KS. As usual, and even though Hays water isn't bad, I also hauled a bag home to try on my well water for fair comparison with other ratings.
Upon ripping open the foil-lined package, the smell that greeted my nos...
Organic Irish Breakfast Tea from Equal Exchange
Style: Irish Breakfast – Region: India61 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
May. 28th, 2024
My review here is decidedly mixed. Since this isn't a bad tea, folks who are interested in the fair-trade/organic aspects may find this a good alternative to the relative dearth of such certifications among Irish Breakfast bagged teas. Being less refined, more of a troglodyte, I just want tea to taste good regardless...
Read Full Review
Mao Feng Green Tea from Teapigs
Style: Mao Feng Green Tea – Region: Anhui, China79 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 3/5
Feb. 6th, 2024
I've only chugged one other green tea of the Mao Feng type (a Tazo bagged offering), and enjoyed that, so I figured I'd try a bigger-leaf, sacheted version. This is one of the best green teas I've had, lots of personality, and mostly worth the slight premium one pays when shoveling a stack of bills across the counter ...
Read Full Review
Festive Breakfast (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend74 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Feb. 4th, 2024
Whittard has a single-sourced English Breakfast by name (from West Java), and an entirely different tea more of the traditional EB style—this one—composed of Ceylon and Kenya teas. Unlike the named EB, I couldn't find Festive Breakfast on Whittard's website, but instead, got it as part of a gift assortment.
Fo...
English Breakfast (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: English Breakfast – Region: West Java, Indonesia77 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 24th, 2023
Given how unimpressed I've been with most of Whittard's offerings so far, this was a pleasant surprise. English Breakfast is their advertised "No. 01" mainstay tea since the Victorian era, at least in loose-leaf form, so presumably the bagged version shouldn't be terribly different.
Though not very strong, the dry...
Darjeeling (Teabags) from Whittard of Chelsea
Style: Darjeeling Black Tea – Region: Darjeeling, India69 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Dec. 3rd, 2023
The photo is from Whittard's website where (as of this writing) 50 round, stringless bags sell for USD $9.50, not too bad for what I presume to be a decent-quality Darjeeling. [They also sell loose-leaf Darjeeling.] Mine came from a 5-bag sampler pack, each bag being of the fold-over type stapled to a string and tag....
Read Full Review
Organic Nilgiri Black Tea from Trader Joe's
Style: Black Tea – Region: Nilgiri, India65 / 100 Aroma: 5/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
Oct. 26th, 2023
This was a strange black tea, in that the in-cup and dry-bag aroma differed more from the flavor than the great majority of black teas I've had. As it turns out, that's a good thing, because the aroma wasn't bad—just weak and weird. The smells were reminiscent of something I don't often associate with tea: mild ch...
Read Full Review
Hatley Castle Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend80 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
May. 2nd, 2023
Here's still another quality green-black blend from Murchie's, who has a large menu of them and seems to have mastered the apparently delicate art. The blend also is over a century old too, with an interesting history: a custom job originally prepared by company founder James Murchie for Laura Dunsmuir, wife of James...
Read Full Review
Government Street Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend89 / 100 Aroma: 9/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 5/5
Mar. 25th, 2023
Here's yet another in a parade of marginally different green/black blends offered by Murchie's, all of which have pleased my nasal passages and taste buds nicely on the way inside. GSB, for short, is the third Murchie's green/black product I've found with both jasmine and bergamot, this one the most bergamot-weighted,...
Read Full Review
Royal English Breakfast from Harney and Sons
Style: English Breakfast – Region: Blend67 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 5/5 Value: 2/5
Jan. 1st, 2023
As with their "Green Tea with Coconut & Ginger", I got this at a last-day estate sale for a quarter (proportionate fraction of a bulk pantry buy). Not per bag, but for the entire tin! That's the best value I've had for a good tea. However, you probably can't match that. So how costly is it, for real? A peek at the...
Read Full Review
Platinum Jubilee Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Black Tea – Region: Blend71 / 100 Aroma: 7/10 Flavor: 3/5 Value: 5/5
Nov. 13th, 2022
While still good, this was the least desirable of the Murchie's "Jubilee" line I've tried so far. Blended this year (2022) in honor of the late Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, it contains a mix of Darjeeling, Assam, Yunnan and Keemun. Given the strong history this company has with teas of those origins individual...
Read Full Review
English Breakfast Black Tea from Rituals
Style: English Breakfast – Region: ?????63 / 100 Aroma: 6/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Oct. 17th, 2022
Not great, but decent and tolerable: that's how I'll characterize this blend. In my relatively limited experience, many food-service black teas (including English Breakfasts) taste rather flat, hollow, sometimes excessively bitter, or often weak, as if they've either been allowed to sit out in the open for 20 years, ...
Read Full Review
CBC Radio Blend Tea Bags from Murchie's Tea & Coffee Ltd
Style: Green and Black Tea Blend – Region: Blend80 / 100 Aroma: 8/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 4/5
May. 8th, 2022
This tea was blended originally in 1996 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, though I don't think CBC markets it directly. Murchie's website touts, "choice Ceylon and China black teas, Jasmine and other green teas with a touch of citrus".
Another in a remarkably large select...
Irish Breakfast (Loose) from Twinings
Style: Irish Breakfast – Region: Blend59 / 100 Aroma: 4/10 Flavor: 4/5 Value: 3/5
Apr. 27th, 2022
The version I'm rating is from the "American" tin (packed in Greensboro, NC, but presumably shipped over in bulk to parse out for that purpose). It doesn't look appreciably different from the photo I uploaded off Twinings' website.
Dry aroma was surprisingly weak for an Irish Breakfast blend, but pleasant to the e...
Page 1 2 3 4 5 of 5 pages with 118 results
